


I Left My Heart in Faber Ice Rink

by Maya_Koppori



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bullying, Gen, Jack messes up, Mentions of Harassment, Near Death Experiences, Past Violence, poor choice of words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6397768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maya_Koppori/pseuds/Maya_Koppori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bitty’s always at his phone,” Shitty is saying, frowning at his own cell. "Jack, you said you saw Bitty this morning? At Faber?”</p><p>“Yeah, for checking practice,” Jack nods. He’s pacing and he knows he needs to stop but he can’t. “But that was early, way before classes started. I left before he did, he said he was going to pop into the east storage room for something and no way was I sticking around-”</p><p>“Brah, I hate going in there,” Shitty agrees. “It’s cold as fuck in the winter and that bitchy door has it in for me, I swear.”</p><p>Jack stumbles to a halt in the kitchen, hand gripping the countertop.</p><p>Shitty’s eyes widen, and he whispers in a horrified voice. “Jack. Jack Zimmerman, please tell me you warned Bittle about the janky closet door from hell before you left.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Left My Heart in Faber Ice Rink

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the title is supposed to be a play on "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."
> 
> This was in my drafts as "OMG Angst Please" and I needed a better title than that. Just a little 'what if' scenario, mainly because I'm a terrible person who wants to dig into the dark and dirty of Bitty's past. Set somewhere before playoffs in Bitty's frog year.

All through the day, Jack feels like he's forgetting something. It’s a nagging, fleeting feeling at the back of his mind, and he just can’t pin it down. After his last class, he checks the school website for homework assignments- all finished. Back at the Haus he checks his laundry, his phone, his calendar, and in a fit of desperation he opens to oven to see if he somehow left something inside. Nothing helps to relieve the sinking feeling in his gut.

“The pies don't just appear, man,” Shitty chirps at him from the kitchen table. He's reading one of his law books while wearing neon green socks and little else, but looks up to raise an eyebrow at Jack. “Do you see a tiny southern baker in our kitchen? No? Then sorry, brah. No Bitty, no pie.”

And suddenly it clicks, all at once, and Jack’s breath catches in his chest. “Annie's.”

“I could go for some, yeah.”

“No,” Jack mumbles. He runs a hand through his hair and spins slowly in a circle in the center of the kitchen, suddenly noticing the stark absence of its most common occupant. “Bittle was going to text me and we were going to go to Annie’s. It was supposed to be… He got through a hard check this morning, we were going to celebrate. That's what I forgot.”

Shitty slowly puts down his book and rests his chin in his hands, looking thoughtful. “He said something about being by here earlier, too, but never showed up. I didn't think anything of it, but… You think the kid’s okay?”

“I'll call him.” He reaches for his phone and dials, and it rings endlessly into his ear before going to an obnoxiously chipper voicemail message.

The hand holding his cell drops to his side, and Jack knows that the look on his face must be pretty horrified for Shitty to look so troubled.

“Bitty’s always at his phone,” Shitty is saying, frowning at his own cell. He taps out a message, waits for a few seconds, and dials. Another few seconds pass before he too hangs up in defeat. “It’s nearly five, and I know he doesn't have class right now. Jack, you said you saw Bitty this morning? At Faber?”

“Yeah, for checking practice,” Jack nods. He’s pacing and he knows he needs to stop but he can’t. “But that was early, way before classes started. I left before he did, he said he was going to pop into the east storage room for something and no way was I sticking around-”

“Brah, I hate going in there,” Shitty agrees. “It’s cold as fuck in the winter and that bitchy door has it in for me, I swear.”

Jack stumbles to a halt in the kitchen, hand gripping the countertop.

Shitty’s eyes widen, and he whispers in a horrified voice. “Jack. Jack Zimmerman, please tell me you warned Bittle about the janky closet door from hell before you left.”

The ground lurches under Jack’s feet and then he’s running. Out of the kitchen, through the Haus front door and streaking across the frosted grass toward Faber. Shitty’s vocie rings out after him, mostly curses as he tries to find some pants, but Jack doesn’t slow down. If he’s right, then he can’t afford to.

Faber Memorial Rink is deserted. There’s no team practice today, and the ice has already been cleared. Jack thunders down the steps to the locker room, where he’d last seen Bittle. As he’d feared, Bittle’s bag and skates are sitting neatly by his locker. His phone lays on top of the bag.

He runs again, tearing through the hallway and finally skidding to a stop in front of a rusted old door. Toeing off one of his shoes, Jack throws the door open and wedges the shoe behind him as a failsafe, which all of the upperclassmen _knew_ they had to do to avoid getting locked in. Not so much the tiny, shivering form he finds inside.

Eric Bittle lurches awake from his place on a pile of jerseys. His head swings around to face Jack, but the light coming from the corridor behind him stings his eyes and he casts his eyes downward. “J-Jack?” He asks, teeth chattering. “That you?”

“ _Mon dieu_ ,” Jack breathes. He crouches at Bittle’s side and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Bittle, what happened?” As if he doesn’t already know.

“The door,” Bittle whispers hoarsely. The shadow Jack casts shields him from the worst of the light, and he finally looks up into Jack’s face. Dried tears mark tracks down his cheeks, long gone but still prominent, and Jack swallows a lump in his throat. “I didn’t hear anyone, but they must have locked it behind me. I didn’t have my phone. I- I couldn’t-”

Jack holds up a hand to silence him. “That’s enough. Come on, let’s get you out of this closet.” He stands and holds out a hand to Bittle.

The smaller boy stares at it. He blinks, and his usually happy features are washed over with anger. “I see how it is,” Bittle says sharply, accusing. “I’ll have you know I had class today. You couldn’t have waited to pull your prank on a weekend?”

Confused, Jack watches Bittle work himself into a fury. He doesn’t know what to say- Bittle is never angry, and he has no frame of reference to work from. “Bittle, what are you talking about? Come here, just let me-” He reaches out to help him up, but Bittle jumps back like Jack is going to hit him.

“You’ve done enough,” Bittle croaks, wincing around the crackle in his throat. “I was gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, but you just had to go and add insult to injury, didn’tcha?” On his own power, Bittle pushes off the ground and squares up all five foot six and a half of him to Jack, poking a finger at his chest. “I hope y’all had your laughs. ‘Oh, let’s put the gay kid back in the closet’; pure comedy, Jack! The originality is breathtaking! But enough is enough.”

Jack stares, unable to do anything else. The words he is saying make sense individually, but together they paint a picture that Jack can’t understand. But he has more important things to worry about. Bittle is red in the face and shaking, from fury or the cold he can’t tell. Either way, he isn’t going to chance it. “Bittle,” he says firmly. “I’m taking you to the nurse. You’re shivering.”

Bittle’s face goes blank. All the fight drains out of him at once, leaving him looking tired and broken. “If you’re not going to talk about it or fess up, then fine. I can manage on my own, thank you very much,” Bittle declares, and takes a step-

-before fainting into Jack’s arms.

Jack braces his feet apart and catches his teammate, supporting his weight. The blond boy is out cold in every sense of the word, and Jack curses himself for not bringing a jacket along. Bittle’s skin is like ice.

Footsteps come pounding down the hall, and Shitty is suddenly there, panting. He’s wearing sweatpants and a shirt that looks like it belongs to Lardo, but at least he’s clothed. “Fuckin’ hell,” he wheezes. “Bitty- is he-”

“I think he’s delirious,” Jack says. He shifts Bittle and lifts him into his arms. Bittle lets out a soft groan, but doesn’t wake up. “When I got here he was asleep on the floor, and he’s freezing. Help me get him to the nurse.”

Shitty looks like he wants to press for more information, but at that moment a visceral shudder wracks Bittle’s frame so hard that Jack almost drops him. Looking between the two of them, Shitty nods, serious. “Okay. Let’s get him some help.”

* * *

“We will be writing a very strongly worded letter to maintenance,” Coach Hall promises Mrs. Bittle over the phone. He pauses, listening, and nods. “Yes ma’am, of course. As soon as the nurse says he’s well enough.” Another pause, and his eyes flit to Jack. “Jack? Yes, he’s right here.” Coach Hall holds out his cellphone, offering it to Jack. “Talk to Bittle’s mother.”

Jack takes the phone gingerly, careful not to drop it. It wouldn’t fare well on the clinic’s hard tile. He leans back in the creaky plastic chair and raises the phone to his ear. “Mrs. Bittle?”

“Jack Zimmerman,” she responds, and he winces at the hitch in her voice that tells him she’s still crying. “Thank you for findin’ my boy. I don’t know how we’ll ever make it up to you.”

“I helped too,” Shitty pipes up from the chair next to him, and Jack suppresses a sigh. They’ve been in the waiting room for an hour, explaining everything to the coaches, the nurse, and the teammates who have come and gone just what happened. Shitty is still in his ridiculous outfit, exposing his torso to the world.

“Is that Mr. Crappy I hear?” Mrs. Bittle laughs tearfully. “Tell him thank you too, Jack. Dicky only says good things about him, or you.”

Something in Jack’s chest tightens, and he knows he has to tell her, but it’s hard. “Mrs. Bittle, you really shouldn’t thank me. It was my fault.”

Silence on the other end of the line, and Shitty stiffens next to him. Coach Hall draws in a sharp breath, shaking his head. But Jack’s said it, and he can’t take it back.

“What do you mean, your fault?” Mrs. Bittle asks slowly, and Jack fights his instinctive urge to hang up and run far, far away.

“I should have told him about the door,” he murmurs, guilt clawing at his chest. “I wasn’t thinking. I was distracted, and I- we’ve played together so much, sometimes I forget-”

“You forgot he wouldn’t know?” Mrs. Bittle, to Jack’s utter confusion, laughs over the phone. “Oh, sweetheart, don’t you go scarin’ me like that! I thought you were about to confess to lockin’ him in there with your own two hands!”

“But it’s my fault,” he repeats, like he doesn’t know how to say anything else. “I’m the captain, it’s my job to look after my team. He- Eric, when I found him, he was so angry with me that he fainted. That should tell you how bad I’ve messed up.”

Mrs. Bittle sighs. “Jack, honey, I’m gonna let you in on somethin’. Dicky might not like me very much for it, but you should know. When he was younger, there were some… Classmates of his who weren’t very nice to him. They locked him a utility shed all night long and didn’t let him out until sunrise.”

Jack’s blood runs cold as the pieces fall into place. “They wouldn’t let him out of the closet?” He says lowly, and Shitty makes a noise of recognition beside him but he can’t bring himself to care as he grips the phone tighter. “Why would they do something like that?”

“Little boys can be mean, especially to someone who’s different from them.” Mrs. Bittle’s voice goes sharp. “He cried all night, Jack. He screamed so much that his voice was shot for a week. Those boys traumatized my Dicky when he’d done nothin’ at all to deserve it. It’s part of why I was so relieved when we moved and left that school behind.”

“You don’t think he could…? Like he does with getting checked?”

Mrs. Bittle sighs again. “Jack, I just don’t know. But if he does, can you promise me something?”

“Anything, Mrs. Bittle.”

“Take care of him for me.”

That makes Jack hesitate. From what Bitty said in the storage room, he’s not likely to let Jack get close to him anytime soon. He’s already half cleared schedule from checking clinics, because even if he does manage to convince Bittle that he wasn’t trying to hurt him, that trust was a fragile one to begin with. Jack won’t get it back easily. But he nods, and says “I’ll do my best, Mrs. Bittle.” Because he’s the captain, and that’s his job.

When Mrs. Bittle hangs up, Jack hands Coach Hall his cellphone without a word. The coach squeezes his shoulder and tries to smile, but it doesn’t quite work. “He’s going to be just fine, Jack. You did good, understand? You did good.”

Jack nods, staring blankly ahead, until Coach Hall sighs and leaves.

Shitty leans forward in his chair to look at Jack. “So when you said he was delirious... What did the kid say to you?”

“He chirped me on my originality,” Jack deadpans.

“Jack.”

“It was a lapse of judgement. When I found him I must have used some variant of ‘out of the closet,’ and now he thinks I locked him in there as a joke. Well, maybe not just me, he did say ‘y’all’ so I guess it applies to the team too.”

“Jesus.” Shitty whistles long and low through his teeth. “This sucks, man.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Shitty’s quiet for a moment, pensive. “I guess I can’t blame him,” he says eventually. “I thought he got over this when he came out to me right before Screw, but you should’ve seen how scared he was, Jack. He wrote cue cards for himself and everything.”

Jack can understand why. Growing up in the south in a sports-heavy environment couldn’t have been the most comfortable way for Bittle to grow up. And then, mere weeks after coming out to a team of hockey bros, he has to relive a terrifying and painful experience. No wonder he got mad at him, Jack realizes. He was sure it was happening all over again.

“Did he tell you about that closet story?” Jack asks.

“Yeah. I mean, he mentioned it in passing at the start of the season- while you were off being your hockey robot preseason self, I might add, so don’t feel bad for not knowing- but when he came out to me we talked about it.” Shitty chuckles and runs a hand through his hair. “Shit, man, did you know Bitty thought we were gonna beat him up if we knew he was gay? It took me totally by surprise, but after hearing about that I really couldn’t blame the kid.”

Jack groans and puts his face in his hands. “He can’t quit on us, Shits, I’d feel awful. I’ve got to fix this.”

Shitty nods sagely and pats his shoulder. “Hey, you might get the chance here in a sec.” He raises his voice slightly and smiles as the nurse comes back into the waiting room. “How’s he holding up?”

The nurse purses her lips. Jack doesn’t understand why- the hockey team basically vacations in the clinic during the season. Or maybe that is the reason. “Bittle’s awake, but he really shouldn’t have any excitement for a while. You boys should come back later.”

Shitty stands up to protest, but Jack pulls on his arm. “His mother called me,” Jack says instead. “She asked me to patch her through to him as soon as he woke up. She’s worried about him.”

The nurse’s stern expression softens. “It only takes one person to do that,” she says warningly, but waves her hand at Jack. He takes that as permission and walks into the back room.

The lights are off over Bittle’s bed, and Jack has to pause in the doorway to let his eyes adjust. Slowly, he becomes aware of Bittle’s cautious gaze. He’s sitting up in bed, a thick quilt wrapped around his shoulders and another folded over his lap. “Jack,” he says, throat rasping. There’s nothing to read in his voice.

“Hi, Bittle. Can. Can I sit?” Jack gestures awkwardly at the single chair, and when Bittle nods he pulls it up to his bedside. “How do you feel?” he asks, because that’s what you do when you visit people who are ill.

Bittle shrugs weakly and draws his blanket tighter. “Cold,” he manages. “Cold, and tired. They said I was in there for ten hours.”

Jack’s throat constricts painfully. “You were. It was almost five before Shitty and I figured out what had happened. Listen, Bittle-”

“I don’t think you did it,” Bittle interrupts before he can finish. He sounds almost exasperated, though Jack can’t tell if it’s directed at him or not. “I worked it up in my head like some big boogeyman while I was in there, but I had some time to think about it when I woke up. And I know that you’re not that kind of person, and neither are any of the other guys on the team. You wouldn’t do me like that.”

“Oh,” Jack breathes. Bittle’s level headedness has caught him somewhat off guard, any words he’s prepared to defend himself rendered redundant. “Well that’s… Good. I’m glad you have that kind of faith in us.”

“Jack-” A cough lodges in his throat, and it takes him a minute of frantic breathing to speak again, but when he does he looks directly at Jack. “I’m sorry for what I said to you, Jack. I really am. Thanks for saving me. The nurse said if you hadn’t have found me when you did, it could have been a lot worse than it is now.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Bittle. I shouldn’t have had to save you,” Jack grumbles. “I should have gone with you, and then this wouldn’t have happened.”

Bittle laughs, low and grating. “Jack, it’s not your fault. Things like this happen.” But his hands shake as they grip the edges of the quilt, and Jack knows now that it’s not from the cold.

There’s a moment of hesitation between them when Jack leans cautiously forward, neither quite knowing what’s going to happen. But as much as Jack knows he’s not good with people and emotions, there is one thing he’s always had going for him. He was born and bred in Montreal, and Samwell weather makes sure he never gets cold.

“You’re still shaking.” That’s the only explanation he gives, and Bittle doesn’t protest as Jack repositions himself on the edge of the bed and wraps him against his side. He’s still ice cold in spite of the blankets, and Jack doesn’t think Bittle will mind. Still, it’s a pleasant surprise when Bittle leans into him, burrowing toward the heat, and his body starts to relax.

After a few minutes, the shaking subsides. Bittle still feels fragile, barely there against him, but at least they’re generating body heat between them. “I told your mom I would call her when you woke up,” Jack says softly. “She’s worried. I didn’t know whether or not you could handle a phone call right now. With your voice, I mean.”

Bittle shakes his head against Jack’s shoulder, slow and sleepy. “I told myself I wouldn’t do it again,” he whispers. “I didn’t want to scream like that. But- and don’t chirp me for this, Lord- it felt like I was back in seventh grade again, and I kept thinking that there were people outside, listening. Like if I could just beg hard enough, let them know how much I was hurting, how scared I was, they’d have a change of heart and let me out.”

“ _Mon dieu_.” Jack’s teeth grind together as he fights the curses that threaten to spill out. “Bittle, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Jack-”

“No. Don’t say it’s not my fault, don’t say I shouldn’t apologize.” Jack can’t stop speaking once he’s started, and the words tumble out all on their own. “I’m supposed to be your captain, Bittle. More than that, I’m supposed your friend. It took me hours to remember that you were even supposed to text me. What- what do you think that says about me? If I’d taken five seconds trying to actually think about the people around me instead of school or hockey, I could have had you out of there hours ago.”

“Jack!” One of Bittle’s hands slips out from under the quilt and shakes his shoulder. He looks angry again for some reason, and this is why Jack was never cut out for things like this, he has no idea why Bittle could possibly be mad at him again. “You darn silly boy, you can't do everything! I know you've got some sort of hangup on doing things right, and I know I can't say anything to change that. But for the love of pie, if you keep tearing yourself up over something you can't help you're gonna make yourself sick!”

It takes everything Jack has to bite his tongue. Whatever Bittle says, Jack won’t be swayed on the irrefutable fact that if he had gone with him to the storage room, Bittle wouldn’t have gotten stuck. But it’s not in his nature to argue with someone on their sickbed, so he’ll have to concede for now. “Okay, I’ll stop. But Bittle?”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“I made your mom a promise on the phone. If you ever need anything, I’m going to do my best to help you.” Jack holds out a loosely curled fist and makes an effort to smile. “From now on, I’ve got your back.”

Bittle’s face splits into a grin, and he gives Jack’s fist a gentle bump with his own. “Got your back.”


End file.
